Yesterday I showed you Part 1 of how to reupholster a chair, which included how to strip the fabric to get to the base of your chair. Today I'm sharing how to paint your chair and stuff it with high quality batting! This part is a lot more enjoyable. Here are the materials you'll need:

-Sandpaper (if you need to clean up any bumpy spots on your chair)-Paint (I used Valspar's "Hazy Stratus" grey)-Brush-Staple Gun-Staples-Batting (I used 1" thick foam batting to make my chair extra comfy!)-New Fabric! Technically you only need about 3 yards for my style of chair, but Ben convinced me to get 4 to be safe and I'm glad I listened because I messed up on the seat cushion and had to use almost all of the extra fabric!

So at this point you should have removed as many staples as you can from your chair along with all fabric and batting that looks yucky. Now it's time to paint!

I like using Valspar paint the best because it's so thick you only have to do 2-3 coats and it looks beautiful! It is also very inexpensive, I got the sample made in Lowes of "Hazy Stratus" which is the same shade of grey from this bookcase and it was only a few dollars and I still have more than half the sample left! Only downside is that the paint samples only come in flat, so it's going to need a sealer coat at some point to keep it protected from chips and scuffs.

Now it's time to start tracing your fabric. I made a double liner for the inside of my chair, see the photo to the left? That top layer of the peach fabric didn't hold up but the layer below it was fine so I just had to trace one new piece for the inside. I also traced the two parts of the chair that would be facing out - so a total of 3 new pieces of traced fabric in the shape of the photo to the right:

I also traced and cut two new pieces of the 1" batting. After using my staple gun to apply a fresh liner of fabric connected with the peach layer that stayed intact, I attached the 1" batting on top. You don't have to use a million staples for this part, because you'll be covering it with the new fabric and that's where the majority of the stapling takes place.

After I did the front, I stapled the back as well:

Once you get to this point, you're ready to layer on the pretty new fabric!

While you're stapling, be sure to fold the fabric a tiny bit so that you're stapling on the fold and not on frayed fabric. Also don't be afraid to staple a MILLION times. You want your fabric to be flat all along the edges for when you add the cord that will cover those staples up and complete the look!

It's really starting to come together! Now for the seat cushion:

Make sure you replace the bottom fabric on your cushion as well as the top part that everyone sees. The bottom part of my cushion was so dusty and dirty, now it's so fresh and so clean! I forgot to take a photo of stapling the bottom cushion so be sure to check in with any of these sites that I referenced in case you have questions that I'm not answering:1) Little Green Notebook (divides the process into 5 extremely comprehensive blog posts, I looked at this one the most)2) Regency By Design (this is a video showing exactly what to do, I used this a lot at the beginning of the process)3) Miss Mustard Seed (just about stripping the fabric/tools to use)

I hope your hands don't hurt too much from that stapler gun! Tomorrow I'll be sharing the finishing touches, like how to do single and double cording to cover up those staples and how to cover up your glue mistakes!

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